04.03.10- The Edgar Wilson Award: A Look at Last Year’s Winners.

 
   In this age of astronomical automation and ever increasingly deeper sky surveys, many believe the era of the amateur comet discoveries to be over. A look at last year’s Edgar Wilson Award winners, however, tells a different tale. Established in 1998, this award has historically split a $20,000 purse among 2 to 6 individuals [...]

08.11.09:Does Cometary Mass Extinction Need to be Rewritten?

The disconnection event of comet 73P Schwassmann-Wachmann-3 as seen from the Hubble Space Telescope. (Credit: NASA/ESA/H. Weaver STScl.)

Comets are cause all mass extinctions in Earth’s history, right? Maybe not, if new research is correct. Simulations run by the scientists at the University of Washington now suggest that the giant planets of Jupiter and Saturn [...]

27.10.09: Exploring Shiva Crater.

Move over, Chicxulub; we may have a new contender in the realm of cosmic extinction events. Recently, paleontologist Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University has dubbed a ring shaped subsurface structure off of the western coast of India Shiva crater. If Chaterjee is correct, it would be one of the largest impact basins on Earth [...]

AstroEvent of the Week: 13.04.09: New Comet Yi-SWAN!

The Path of Comet Yi-Swan from April 11th to May 11th. (Created in Starry Night).

We interrupt our usual astro-event of the week to bring you a last minute shout-out a tad early; a fairly bright comet has recently been announced by the Central Bureau of Astronomical Telegrams (CBAT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (really; does [...]

Astro-Event of the Week, August 5th-11th, 2008: The Perseid Meteors!

Meteor & Aurorae. (Credit: Antwrp/NASA)
August always meant one thing for me as a kid; the Perseid Meteor shower . Arguably one of the  best, or at least most dependable meteor showers of the year, this shower also has the advantage of occurring in the middle of the northern hemisphere summer, when conditions are conducive to [...]

Astro-event of the Week: July 15-21st 2008

 
A Dawn Comet. Looking Eastward from mid-northern Latitudes.
(Credit: Stellarium). 
     Comets are the great surprise packages of the solar system. Often appearing out of nowhere, they can brighten up with surprising rapidity, or unexpectedly fizzle, like Kahoutek did in the 1970s. Hence, astronomers are very reluctant to cry “comet of the century” unless they are very certain.

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